COVID-19 has become one of the most severe issues dominating discussions on the agendas of states globally, and across the African continent, since its emergence in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has regrettably brought into sharp focus the continued multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination faced by women and girls in Africa because of their intersecting identities. Yet, paradoxically, although African women are disproportionately affected by the crisis, they are largely invisible in the responses. Several African states and governments have taken different policy measures in response to the pandemic. These responses have taken different dimensions, including shutting down economies, imposition of lockdowns, coercive quarantine measures with police enforcement and criminal consequences for offenders violating these rules. Unfortunately, these responses have reinforced and amplified women’s disproportionate disadvantage and gender inequalities in Africa. Against this backdrop, this book asks the intersectional question about women’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. Applying an intersectional human rights lens involves questioning how the intersecting identities that African women embody affect their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lavender Fields uses autoethnography to explore how Black girls and women are living with and through COVID-19. It centers their pain, joys, and imaginations for a more just future as we confront all the inequalities that COVID-19 exposes. Black women and girls in the United States are among the hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of illnesses, deaths, evictions, and increasing economic inequality. Riffing off Alice Walker’s telling of her search for Zora Neal Hurston, the authors of these essays and reflections offer raw tellings of Black girls’ and women’s experiences written in real time, as some of the contributors battled COVID-19 themselves. The essays center Black girls and women and their testimonies in hopes of moving them from the margin to the center. With a diversity of voices and ages, this volume taps into the Black feminine interior, that place where Audre Lorde tells us that feelings lie, to access knowledge—generational, past, and contemporary—to explore how Black women navigate COVID-19. Using womanism and spirituality, among other modalities, the authors explore deep feelings, advancing Black feminist theorizing on Black feminist praxis and methodology. In centering the stories of Black girls and women’s experiences with COVID-19, this work brings much-needed justice and equity to conversations about the pandemic. Just as Walker worked diligently to find Hurston, Lavender Fields attempts to “find” Black women amid all we are experiencing, ensuring visibility and attention. Contributors Tamaya Bailey reelaviolette botts-ward Kyrah K. Brown Brianna Y. Clark Kenyatta Dawson LeConté J. Dill Maryam O. Funmilayo Brandie Green Courtney Jackson Sara Jean-Francois Julia S. Jordan-Zachery Angela K. Lewis-Maddox Annet Matebwe Mbali Mazibuko Radscheda Nobles Nimot Ogunfemi J. Mercy Okaalet Chizoba Uzoamaka Okoroma Peace Ossom-Williamson Elizabeth Peart

This book describes the political, social, and economic connections between gender and the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors offer innovative ideas for recovery that will build a more prosperous, healthy, equitable, and sustainable future for African women and girls, targets identified under Goal 5 (Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment) of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals slated to be achieved by 2030. Within this context, authors identify issues related to the protection of women and girls from poverty, hunger, and gender-based violence; improved healthcare and healthcare workforce experiences; girl-child education; financial inclusion; and entrepreneurship opportunities for women in fintech, tourism, and information, communication and technology (ICT). The book concludes with a discussion of economic empowerment for women that focuses on normalising the ‘un-normal’ outcome of the pandemic. The book will be of value to policymakers, non-profit organisations, practitioners, and scholars who understand the importance of gender equality and women empowerment in the African continent.

About the publication COVID-19 has become one of the most severe issues dominating discussions on the agendas of states globally, and across the African continent, since its emergence in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has regrettably brought into sharp focus the continued multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination faced by women and girls in Africa because of their intersecting identities. Yet, paradoxically, although African women are disproportionately affected by the crisis, they are largely invisible in the responses. Several African states and governments have taken different policy measures in response to the pandemic. These responses have taken different dimensions, including shutting down economies, imposition of lockdowns, coercive quarantine measures with police enforcement and criminal consequences for offenders violating these rules. Unfortunately, these responses have reinforced and amplified women's disproportionate disadvantage and gender inequalities in Africa. Against this backdrop, this book asks the intersectional question about women's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. Applying an intersectional human rights lens involves questioning how the intersecting identities that African women embody affect their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this important book, experts assess what the COVID-19 pandemic means for gender inequalities in the global south, examining how threats to equitable development will impact the most marginalized and at-risk women and girls in particular. The book draws on research across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America to examine COVID-19-related issues around gender-based violence, work and care, education and health care, and asks whether global responses are enough to mitigate the negative outcomes of deepening gender inequality. It is a guide to stimulate the important debate about how to promote women’s rights during the management and recovery phases of the pandemic.

Since its emergence, the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest global crises in perhaps a century and led to unimaginable human suffering. Although much coverage has been dedicated to exploring the different impacts of the crisis, such as its social, political, and economic consequences, comparatively little attention has been directed to examining the particular impact of the pandemic on women and girls. Past crises and outbreaks have powerfully demonstrated that men and women are differently affected, and preexisting inequalities and challenges for women and girls are often exacerbated. Comprising a rich collection of rigorous analyses that touch upon an extensive number of topics and an array of countries, this edited collection critically interrogates how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted women and girls around the world. With high-quality contributions from international scholars and experts from numerous fields and disciplines, and containing research based on a variety of methodologies and approaches, the present volume provides a wide-ranging, evidence-based exploration and nuanced perspective on this issue.

The contributors of this volume share with the scholarly community how they have learned to strive, resist, adapt, and re-conceptualize Black women's mental health and labor during the dual pandemics of white supremacy and COVID-19. This book is unique in that it calls for the contributing authors to draw upon and reflect on the use of sisterhood and a literacy circle to cope with an economic crisis, mass death, and racial battle fatigue during a worldwide pandemic. Specifically, the invited authors draw inspiration from Venus E. Evans-Winters' book Black Feminism in Qualitative Inquiry: A Mosaic for Writing Our Daughter's Body as an exemplar of research that both centers the issues and concerns of Black women scholar-practitioner-activists and presents a methodology consistent with Black feminist ways of knowing and expressions. Evans-Winters' theoretical and methodological writings are among the first works in research and gender studies that have successfully interwoven Black feminists' politics, spirituality, and Africanism with educational research and thought. Using constructed stories from the authors’ personal narratives, Black Women Mothering and Daughtering During a Dual Pandemic: Writing Our Backs addresses themes pertinent to Black women's lives, including our socialization and socio-emotional development, mother/daughter and other mother-daughter relationships, navigating the racial politics of schooling, friendships, survivorship, and grief using non-normative methodological concepts and practices. The authors explore concepts such as daughtering, politicking, mother speak, and cultural exchange while employing linguistic expressions such as prose, text messages, dialogue, and personal narrative—firmly planted in authentic Black womanist aesthetics. Furthermore, the authors highlight and demonstrate why and how they utilize reading and Black women's literary works to critically reflect, meaningfully write, heal, and do their work in times of peril (Morrison, 2019). More specifically, this book explores how the authors draw from Black women's cultural literacies in teaching, healing, mentoring, and activism. How are Black women's literary works as a body of knowledge used in healing spaces to marshal new or forgotten healing methodologies, cultural frame of references, and spiritual awakenings? The contributing authors address this question from multiple perspectives, such as education, social work, and psychology. Collectively, the authors advance Black women's mental wealth as a theoretical and methodological healing modality that meets their multiple identities as spiritual and cultural beings, educators, daughters, mothers, sisters, healers, and social activists. This is the first anthology to explore how Black women's literacy during a state of racial unrest and resistance alongside a global health pandemic shapes our cultural knowledge, ways of coping, and spiritual endeavors across varied-and often ambiguous contexts.